Crazy news 'round the globe

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At a guess as to why this causes offence to some; it surely has to be to do with the word 'gentrifyng.' I was taught about the 'gentrification of urban centres' in school about 20 years ago so and the likes of Starbucks and Tesco were referred to. Maybe in the US (where I assume this sign is from) gentrification has connotations in terms of particular ethnic groups becoming dominant in particular neighbourhoods. So maybe it has double meaning in the US or elsewhere. Personally, I dont find it offensive either way.

We had one in Belfast recently outside a rib place "You can beat the wife but you cant beat this offer." Reactions on a postcard, please...
 
That would be weird. I used to live in an ethnically diverse place that was the country's go-to example for gentrification, and while the process was controversial, nobody would have felt racially offended by the word itself.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the name of the place is "Ink", because ink is black? Can some of our 'Murican friends shed some light on this?
 
Niall Kielt said:
At a guess as to why this causes offence to some; it surely has to be to do with the word 'gentrifyng.' I was taught about the 'gentrification of urban centres' in school about 20 years ago so and the likes of Starbucks and Tesco were referred to. Maybe in the US (where I assume this sign is from) gentrification has connotations in terms of particular ethnic groups becoming dominant in particular neighbourhoods. So maybe it has double meaning in the US or elsewhere. Personally, I dont find it offensive either way.

We had one in Belfast recently outside a rib place "You can beat the wife but you cant beat this offer." Reactions on a postcard, please...
Click to expand...

Starbucks has a business model that's based around "reconsolidation", e.g. buying out each and every small coffee shop in the hood, replacing them with SB, and then closing everything except for big few after the "reconsolidation" is done.
All of these, Starbucks, gentrification, social justice, are primarily concepts sourced from the US. It's hard for outside people to grasp the whole issue. For instance, I've read a long text from American explaining how entrance of "mid class" stuff changes demographic picture of the targeted settlement. It was based around developers buying estate in ex-industrial zones of USA, poor and with a lot of ruined construction, for instance to convert an industrial hall into a comfortable studio apartment(s). Gradually they develop but they also raise the costs of living, because their target audience is not already established population. You don't rent fancy designer apartments to the poor. Over time, the demographic picture will be changed in favour of mid-class newcomers.
 
Speaking of Starbucks, there is always a massive outrage against their Holiday Cups every year (one of the reasons being that they're "Holiday" cups, not "Christmas" cups)... this year's outrage showed more clearly than anything that it's just outrage for the sake of outrage:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/20/style/starbucks-gay-agenda.html

I think the socio-political implications of this are simply mindblowing.
 
'Gentrification' gets used ironically and critically to describe what some consider a social class-based version of ethnic cleansing. It comes up a lot in debates about housing in London, specifically, the bulldozing of social/low cost housing to create luxury apartments, and landlords ditching traditional shops and businesses in favour of designer eateries and non-essential artisan crafts shops - plus things like covering a rundown tower block in nice-looking cladding which isn't fireproof, to make the area look more prestigious and add value to nearby luxury properties. It's not 100% about racism, I can only guess that people are jumping to the conclusion that all poorer people aren't white.
 
^ nah that's the US part. Most of the poor aren't white and those who are got relabeled as "trash". To paint a picture that's so distanced from reality - it's absurd. Poland - 99% white, fucked up, class divide. Oh but they got fucked by Russians and Russians are Jews and Jews are NWO. What about Croatia then? 99% white, class divide, fucked up by...Croatians.

The "problem" with US is they see themselves as leaders of the world. When you declare someone an unconditional leader, then it's expected he's best at everything and anything. Well US might be first in technology, military, business, etc. But they're in their sociological preteen years compared to Europe and right at infancy compared to China. Political groups over there resort to shallow, hard-axe solutions to problems which were digested by European societies decades ago. It is the American Exception - they won't even bother looking elsewhere for insight.
 
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